Japanese
literature traces its beginnings to oral traditions
that were first recorded in written form in the
early eighth century after a writing system was
introduced from China. The Kojiki
(Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon shoki
(Chronicle of Japan) were complete in 712 and 720,
respectively, as government projects.

The former is an anthology of myths, legends, and
other stories, while the latter is a chronological
record of history. The Fudoki (Records
of Wind and Earth), compiled by provincial officials
beginning in 713, describe he history, geography,
products and folklore of the various provinces.

In
the aristocratic culture that thrived early in the
eleventh century, a time when the use of the hiragana
alphabet derived from Chinese characters had become
widespread, court ladies played the central role in
developing literature. One of them,
Murasaki Shikibu, wrote the 54-chapter novel Genji
monogatari (Tale of Genji). Others
wrote diaries and stories with their psychological
portrayals remaining fresh and vivid to present-day
readers.

The
function of literature as a means of social
intercourse broadened. Composing renga
(successive linked verses by several people forming
a long poem) became a favorite pastime, and this
gave birth to haikai (a sort of jocular renga)
in the sixteenth century. The renowned
seventeenth century poet Matsuo Basho who perfected
a new condensed poetic form of 17 syllables (5-7-5)
known as haiku, an embodiment of elegant simplicity
and tranquility.

The
written literature of Japan forms one of
the richest of Oriental traditions.
It has received foreign influences since
its beginning in the 8th century.
Before the middle of the 19th century, the
source of influence was the culture of
China. After the middle of the 19th
century, the impact of modern Western
culture became predominant.

Official
embassies to the Sui (589-618) and Tang
(618-907) dynasties of China (kenzuishi
and kentoshi, respectively), initiated in
600, were the chief means by which Chinese
culture, technology and methods of
government were introduced on a
comprehensive basis in Japan. The
Kojiki (712; Record of Ancient Matter) and
the Nihon shoki (720; Chronicles of
Japan), the former written in hybrid
Sino-Japanese and the latter in classical
Chinese, were compiled under the
sponsorship of the government for the
purpose of the authenticating the
legitimacy of its policy.

However,
among these collections of myths,
genealogies, legends of folk heroes, and
historical records, there appear a number
of songs - largely irregular in meter and
written with Chinese characters
representing Japanese words or syllables -
that offer insight into the nature of
preliterate Japanese verse.

The
first major collection of native poetry,
again written with Chinese character, was
the Man'yoshu (late 8th century; The Ten
Thousand Leaves), which contains verses,
chiefly the 31-syllable waka, that were
composed in large part between the mid-7th
and mid-8th centuries. The earlier
poems in the collection are characterized
by the direct expression of strong
emotion, but those of alter provenance
show the emergence of the rhetorical
conventions and expressive subtlety that
dominated the subsequent tradition of
court poetry.

A
revolutionary achievement of the mid-9th
century was the development of a native
orthography 9kana) for the phonetic
representation of Japanese.
Employing radically abbreviated Chinese
characters to denote Japanese sounds, the
system contributed to a deepening
consciousness of a native literary
tradition distinct from that of China.
Poets compiled collections (shikashu)
of their verses and, drawings partly on
these, the Kokin wakashu (905; Collection
from Ancient and Modern Times), the
first of 21 imperial anthologies of native
poetry, was assembled in the early 10th
century.

The
introduction of kana also led to the
development of a prose literature in the
venacular, early examples of which are the
Ise monogatari (mid-10th century; Tales
of Ise), a collection of vignettes
centered on poems; and the diary Tosa
nikki (935; The Tosa Diary).
In the late 10th century; the ascendancy
of the Fujiwara regents, whose power over
emperors depended on the reception of
their daughters as imperial consorts,
resulted in the formation of literary
coteries of women in the courts of
empresses, and it was these women who
produced the great prose classics of the
11th century. Such works as Genji
monogatari (early 11th century; The
Tale of Genji), a fictional narrative
by Murasaki Shikibu, and the Makura no
soshi (996-1012; The Pillow Book of
Sei Shonagon), a collection of essays
by Sei Shonagon, are considered by
Japanese to be a watershed in the
development of the native literary
tradition.

The
chief development in poetry during the
medieval period (mid-12th to 16th century)
was linked verse (renga).
Arising from the court tradition of waka,
renga was cultivated by the warrior
class as well as by courtiers, and some
among the best renga poets, such as
Sogi, were commoners. A major
development in prose literature of the
medieval era was the war tale (gunki
monogatari). Heike monogatari
(early 13th century; The Tale of the
Heike) relates the events of the war
between the Taira and Minamoto families
that finally brought an end to imperial
rule; it was disseminated among all levels
of society by itinerant priests who
chanted the story to the accompaniment of
a lutelike instrument, the biwa.
THe social upheaval of the early years of
the era led to the appearance of works
deeply influenced by the Buddhist notion
of the inconstancy of worldly affairs (mujo).
The theme of mujo provides the
ground note of Heike monogatari and
essay collections Hojoki (1212; The
Ten Foot Square Hut), by Kamo no
Chomei, and Tsurezuregusa (ca 1330;
Essays in Idleness), by Yoshida
Kenko.

The
formation of a stable central government
in Edo (now Tokyo), after some 100 years
of turmoil, and the growth of a market
economy based on the widespread use of a
standardized currency led to the
development in the Edo period (1600-1868)
of a class of wealthy townsmen.
General prosperity contributed to an
increase in literacy, and literary works
became marketable commodities, giving rise
to a publishing industry. Humorous
fictional studies of contemporary society
such as Koshoku ichidai otoko
(1682; The Life of an Amorous Man),
by Ihara Saikaku, were huge commercial
successes, and prose works, often
elaborately illustrated, that were
directed toward a mass audience became a
staple of Edo-period literature.
Commercial playhouses were established for
the performance of puppet plays (joruri)
and kabuki, whose plots often
centered on conflicts arising from the
rigidly hierarchical social order that was
instituted by the Tokugawa shogunate.

The
17-syllable form of light verse know as haikai
(later know as haiku), whose
subject matter was drawn from nature and
the lives of ordinary people, was raised
to the level of great poetry by Matsuo
Nasho. He is especially well known
for his travel diaries, such as the
Oku no hosomichi (1694; The Narrow
Road to the Deep North). A
number of philologists, among them Keichu,
Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga,
wrote scholarly studies on early literary
texts, such as Kojiki, Man'yoshu,
and The Tale Genji.

The
imperial restoration of 1868 was followed
by the wholesale introduction of Western
technology and culture, which largely
displaced Chinese culture. As a
result, the novel became established as a
serious and respected genre of the
literature of Japan. A related development
was the gradual abandonment of literary
language in favor of the usages of
colloquial speech.

Futabatei
Shimei produced what has been called
Japan's first modern novel, Ukigumo
(1887-1889; Drifting Clouds).
What is strikingly fresh about the novel
is the colloquial style of the language,
Futabatei's conception of his hero's
plight within the context of a quickly
changing society, and his subtle
psychological examination of the
protagonist. in the 1890's,
Futabatei's psychological insight was
adopted by several young writers.
One of the most impressive works of
fiction in this style was the story Takekurabe
(1895-1896; Growing Up), by Higuchi
Ichiyo. In this tale of children
living in a red-light district, Ichiyou
describes adolescent loneliness and the
confusion attending the onset of puberty.
Another writer, Shimazaki Toson, relates
in his first novel, Hakai (1906; The
Broken Commandment), the story of a
schoolteacher who hides the fact that he
was born in a community of outcaste people
until he realizes his only salvation lies
in living openly with the truth.
After Hakai, however, Toson
retreated into his own private world to
write in the genre of person history known
as the "I-novel" (shishosetsu).

The
modern Japanese realistic novel was
brought to full maturity by Natsume Soseki.
His heroes are usually university-educated
men made vulnerable by the new egoism and
an overly keen perception of their
separation from the rest of the world.
Guilt, betrayal, and isolation are for
Soseki the inevitable consequences of the
liberation of the self and all the
uncertainties that have come with the
advent of Western culture. These
motifs are explored in his novels Kokoro
(1914; The Heart), Mon
(1910; The Gate), and Kojin (1912-1913;
The Wayfarer). Mori Ogai
first won acclaim with three romantic
short stories set in Germany. The
most popular Maihime (1890; The
Dancing Girl), deals with the doomed
love affair of a a young Japanese student
in Berlin with a German dancer. His
most representative late works are
fictionalized studies in history and
biography, such as the life of an
Edo-period doctor presented in Shibue
Chusai (1916). Akutagawa
Ryunosuke was one of Japan's most famous
short-story writers. Such stories as
Rashomon (1915; Rashomon), and Yabu
no naka (1922; In a Grove) are
brilliantly told, combining psychological
subtlety and a sardonic tone with a
fanciful delight in the grotesque.
Nagai Kafu, whose life and work reflected
the tension between the modern and a
yearning for the old Japan, is best known
for his elegiac works.

The
writer who most clearly reflected the
sense of loss and confusion following the
shattering experience of World War II was
Dazai Osamu. Dazaio's Shayo
(1947; The Setting Sun) and the
novel published just before his suicide, Ningen
shikkaku (1948; No Longer Human),
attracted a large readership. Not
long after the defeat, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro
published his masterpiece, the massive
novel Sasameyuki (1943-1948; The
Makioka Sisters). A chronicle of
the lives of the daughters of a patrician
merchant family in its last stages of
decline before the outbreak of war, it is
a beautiful elegy to the final passing of
all that remained of an older and more
elegant world.

In
novels such as Yukiguni (1935-1948;
Snow Country), Nobel laureate
Kawabata Yasunari creates enormous
distances between his characters,
suggesting a dread of intimacy that
threatens even the most promising of human
relationships. After the war,
Kawabata took to writing what he called
"elegies to the lost Japan" in
such works as Yama no oto
(1949-1954; The Sound of the Mountain).
Yet Japanese writing in the early postwar
years could not be characterized solely in
terms of the shock and dislocation of
defeat. There was, in fact, a
vigorous renascence of literary activity
after 1945, and a new group of writers who
debuted at this time came to be known as
the "first generation" of
postwar authors. Members of this
group include Noma Hiroshi and Ooka Shohei.
The "second generation" of
postwar writers includes Abe Kobo and
Mishima Tukio. Abe would eventually
create a distinctive type of Kafkaesque
existential allegory in novels such as Suna
no onna (1962; The Woman in the
Dunes), while Mishima attracted an
international readership with his opulent
aestheticism in such works as Kinkakuji
(1956; The Temple of The Golden
Pavilion).

Critics
have posited a turning point in the
1950's, after which Japanese fiction ca no
longer be easily characterized in terms of
the early postwar consciousness.
Beginning about this time, a revival and
restructuring of the I-novel form was
achieved by a "third generation"
of postwar writers such as Kojima Nobui,
Yasuika Shotaro, Yo, Yoshiyuki Junnosuke,
and Shimao Toshio. Also included in this
group is Endo Shusaku, a Catholic convert
who examines the issues of betrayal,
cowardice, and martyrdom in novels such as
Chimmoki (1966; Silence).
From the 1960s onward, writers have sought
to synthesize various approaches to
fiction or to experiment with new modes of
representation. Oe Kenzaburo, who
received the Nobel Prize for literature in
1994, has been a prodigiously inventive
fore in contemporary fiction, continuously
experimenting with form and mode of
presentation in such novels as Kojinteki
na taiken (1964; A Personal Matter)
and Man'en gannen no futtoboru
(1967; The Silent Cry).
Tsushima Tuki, the daugther od Dazai Osamu
has explored the lives of women who are
single parents in Choji (1978; Child
of Fortune).

Finally,
the generation raised on the international
culture of the last decades has found its
voice in writers such as Murakami Ryu,
author of Kagirinaki tomei ni chikai
buru (1976; Almost Transparent Blue),
and Murakami Haruki, whose Noruue no
mori (1987; Norwegian Wood) sold more
than 3 million copies. Toshimoto
Banana, who was born in 1964, portrays the
lives of people in desperately isolated
situations in Kitchin (1987; Kitchen).
These writers have been immensely popular
with young readers both in Japan and
abroad.

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